Stung, Warned and Slaughtered
by Jackie Guardian
Summary: Obsessive compulsive Olivia Bowen lives alone, with only her 15 body guards. When a horror echoing her past turns up in her bathroom one morning she has no choice but to get specialist help.
1. Prologue

It had been a long shift for Karl Crawford. He had always fancied himself as a personal body guard, probably due to how romantically they are portrayed on the silver screen, but there were no sunglasses and packing heat with this job. He had been one of the specially selected and trained body guards for Olivia Bowen for coming up to seven years. When he was initially approached for the position Karl thought himself fortunate, minimal risk with an extraordinary pay check, but the truth had always been that he had been in the business for the excitement. Stood outside a middle aged woman's bedroom door of her stately home in the south of England for ten hours just didn't cut it.

Karl's needlessly expensive watch beeped as the many clocks in the house chimed seven. That was their cue. Catching the site of his colleague to the open door to his left, Karl turned and walked to the open door on his right. He heard the tell-tale click of the handle of the door that he had been stood in front of all night. "Good Morning Ms Bowen." Karl said in his softest voice without turning to acknowledge his boss' presence. That's the way she liked it, for him to concentrate on his job.  
"Morning Karl." The voice came over his shoulder. The bodyguard continued to walk ahead at the regulated steady pace, in time with the soft metronome in his ear piece. Karl stopped by his appointed door and swung it open on the twentieth second. With an exact five second glance around the spotless bathroom, he stepped back for the entry of Ms Bowen. Five more seconds later the door was locked from the inside. Karl glanced at his watch retaking up his protective stance in front of the now locked door.

07:01:00 – The shower was turned on.

07:01:30 – Ms Bowen had just opened the bathroom window exactly ten point five inches.

07:01:50 – Ms Bowen got in the shower.

07:02:00 – Ms Bowen drew the shower curtains.

07:11:30 – Ms Bowen turned the shower off.

07:12:00 – Ms Bowen drew the curtains.

07:12:01 – Ms Bowen screamed.

Karl barely registered the scream before he felt himself swivel, take a step back and put his full weight on his foot as he brought it into contact with the old door. As the wood splintered at the lock, his colleagues were already behind him coming from both left and right. Karl instincts led him straight to Ms Bowen to check her safety, but her look of horror whilst clutching the shower curtain directed to the wall confused him somewhat. Behind him, he heard at least one of his colleagues retch and Karl knew he didn't want to see what everyone else was seeing. Fighting the urge to turn and run from whatever horror was in that room, his head slowly swiveled to the right to find what was at the end of everyone else's eye line.

Karl Crawford was a long way from the stately home in the south of England that he thought he was at.


	2. Chapter 1

The four white sails of Jonathon Creek's home rotated gently in the late morning sun. Greying roots of a curly head of hair was the only thing to be seen in the house until the phone rang. The double duvet ruffled slightly as an arm protruded from it and withdrew again clutching a mobile. "Jonathan Creek." The man said in a muffled early morning croak. "What?" Jonathan wasn't sure what he thought he'd heard but when the voice repeated he realised he had. "I'm sorry; I don't do grizzly murders before my first cup of tea of the day." He explained in his tired voice.  
"First cup of-Jonathan! You know it's half eleven don't you? Get your lazy arse out of bed." Joey's broad northern accent resonated down the phone line. "I'm twenty minutes away, if you want that tea you better make it."

Jonathan stumbled out of bed squinting in the warm sunlight. He wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to sleep in so late, however he'd been up pretty late with his magician partner Adam Klaus planning their next big trick. He pulled on a T-shirt and headed down the wooden stairs, absent minded thoughts still clashing with a sleep filled mind. Jonathan pushed his teabag round his mug distracted as he tried to reconstruct the conversation he had only minutes earlier. There was something about it that piqued his interest, but it certainly wasn't the sheer grotesqueness of what he had heard.

Jonathan remained at the table in his underwear clutching his tea when Joey let herself in after an over-eager knock on the windmill door. She flew up the stairs grinning, dropping her smile slightly at the sight of the tired illusionist in his pants. "You seem far too excited! Someone has died you know!" Jonathan began with a half-hearted attempt at the high ground which was severely wounded due to the lack of trousers. Barely acknowledging defeat, he nodded towards the kettle in the corner before finishing his tea. "And I'll have another, thanks."

"So let me get this straight..." Jonathan started, cradling his new tea. "...This lady-"  
"Olivia Bowen." Joey Interjected.  
"Yes, Olivia Bowen. "Jonathan flicked an annoyed glance her way. "She locked herself in the bathroom, got in the shower and drew the curtain. Now she doesn't hear anything and neither does the guy stood outside, but when she opens the curtains again there's a body there."  
"Except you could barely describe it as a body." They locked eyes for a split second before Joey broke to take a sip of tea. Jonathan could see the excitement in her eyes, but more worryingly something else, more like terror. He knew the kind of things she got a kick out of. "What do you mean?" Jonathan said slowly, watching his friends movements.  
"I mean it was less of a body, more like..." She paused. "..A pile of limbs." Jonathan fought off a shudder. "From what she told me two arms, two legs. All in separate bits, that's what she told me anyway."  
"How-Who'dya mean she?"  
"Ms Bowen."  
"You're bothering her already? Hasn't she had a bad enough morning?"  
"She rang me."  
"Why did she ring you?"  
"She thought I was you."  
"What!?"Joey looked slightly sheepish under Jonathan's gaze.  
"I've been advertising your services on my, um, website."  
"For God's sake!" Jonathan sighed. "You know I could sue you for that!"  
"Don't be such a baby!" Joey shook her head and downed the rest of her tea before heading down the stairs. "Come on Jonathan!" Jonathan followed her; exasperated, searching for some kind of comeback. He still didn't have one by the bottom of the stairs, where his seemed coat hit him in the face. Joey flung the door open form where she had thrown Jonathan his coat and made a dash for her car. Simultaneously pulling his duffel coat on one sleeve after the other whilst jamming his feel in his trainers he hopped after her, rummaging in his coat pocket for his keys. Closing his front door behind him, Jonathan froze. There was a breeze around his mid drift. "Gimme two minutes!"


	3. Chapter 2

Jonathan assumed that the police had photographed what they had needed and hurried to clear the mess in the bathroom, but the tell-tale signs of something unbelievably grim still hung in the air. The pair of sleuths had not long entered the house, greeting their host on the way in. She was pale and shaken-up but the British in her still offered them perfect hospitality. Keen to rule out any obvious cheap tricks, Jonathan headed straight to the scene of the crime. He had smiled at the police officers posted still, half expecting friction, but these days they all seemed to be almost waiting for him when something strange happened. Jonathan winced as he inhaled through his nose. "Do you smell that?" He said aloud before returning his attention to the congealed stains on the floor. Joey already had her jacket pulled across her face in an attempt to shield herself. "Yup..."She moaned slowly through her covered mouth, her pained eyes just visible. "What does that tell us?" Jonathan said in an extra nasally voice as he tried to breathe through his mouth. He didn't look up, but dropped to a crouch to inspect the floor. "Umm..." Joey tried to concentrate. "That the guys been dead a while?"  
"Exactly! I'd say that that awful smell combined with the severe lack of blood, especially fresh, here almost emphatically means that there has been no murder here or anywhere recently. So that raises the most important question yet: Why? People go to great lengths to murder, and further to make it seem like an accident or make it seem like they are innocent or whatever. This is weird; it's just a body dump. Ms Bowen is hardly implicated so it's not a framing...pretty much points to someone wanting to scare the house owner shitless, and lets be fair, there are easier ways..."

Joey watched Jonathan pace around the bathroom in thought. She could tell he was already enjoying this one. Jonathan climbed in the large shower staring straight at Joey before tugging the curtain back and forth a few times. Her eyes wondered to rest of the bathroom. For all intensive purposes it seemed like a normal bathroom, an expensive one at that. There was plenty of room for someone to sneak around. She started rooting through the bathroom cupboard as her partner messily checked the taps spraying water all over his duffel coat. Joey turned her attention to the walls, running her hands along its smooth painted surface. Roughness caught her ring finger as there was a call from behind her.

"This window is huge, why are we even here?" Jonathan said in a disgruntled tone. "It's a ladder job."  
"Well yeah." Joey turned and strolled to join Jonathan on the opposite side of the room. " 'cept every day this window locked ten point five inches open." Joey gently pressed her finger against a small red line on the frame enjoying Jonathan's puzzled expression. "And what did you make of the bullet hole?" Joey said with a smile, she knew he hadn't noticed it. Jonathan bound across the room, curls bouncing, to where Joey had been only seconds before pressing his face right up against the anomaly in the wall. "Hmm. If that is indeed a bullet hole...where's the bullet?"


End file.
